CI-NEW: Collaborative Research: Developing a Community Infrastructure for Reliability-Aware Cross-Layered Design of Integrated Circuits

Reliability analysis of integrated circuits (ICs) has become a greater concern in the development of computing systems. Technology scaling offers more transistors to enable system-on-a-chip (SoC) integration, but it also means more transistors that can be affected by radiation-induced faults. Designers must consider how those faults impact the entire computing system by including levels of abstraction in both hardware and software. Reliability cannot be addressed by considering the device, circuit, architecture, or application layer individually. Cross-layered modeling and simulation enables a better understanding of the complex interactions among particle physics, fabrication technology, processor architecture, and the software stack in order to develop reliable computing systems. With the increase in cost and time of the system design process, pre-fabrication modeling of radiation effects has become a critical field of research. By understanding these processes, designers can meet traditional constraints of performance and power, while addressing concerns for the soft error rate (SER). Potential application domains include, but are not limited to, automotive embedded systems, high-performance computing, and spaceborne environments.

This project creates a research infrastructure that links soft error simulations at the device, circuit, architecture, and application levels. This infrastructure provides a testbed for characterizing the resilience of algorithms for computer and computational sciences. It also contains testbeds for evaluating the reliability of the architecture and the design of computing systems. By providing up-to-date models of the effects of single events on current and future technologies, it facilitates the development of computing models and technologies based on emerging scientific ideas from the research community. The infrastructure will be accessible to a larger research community through web-based content (e.g., online tutorials and webinars) and interactive workshops at conferences and symposia. This project broadens the participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through outreach to encourage students to enter the science and engineering fields. The STEM Scholars Program at North Carolina A&T provides a computing skills workshop to African-American high school students.